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Star Trek Into Darkness - Trailer

After the crew of the Enterprise find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction.

Verdict: A revitalised old favourite shines anew with a successful sequel

Four years after his worthy reboot of the sometimes perplexing Star Trek universe, director J.J. Abrams has constructed a sequel that pushes the familiar characters towards their own distinct identities.

Star Trek into Darkness is an impressive science-fiction adventure with strong storytelling fundamentals, engrossing visual detail and a sharp political edge. Trekkies will be setting their phasers to stunned.

Star Trek Into Darkness Photo: Zade Rosenthal

The 23rd century is now an entertaining - and relevant - setting in a film that hinges on the repeated question of what an individual will do for the good of the group.

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''The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,'' declares Mr Spock (Zachary Quinto), the Vulcan science officer of the starship Enterprise, and the movie shows how sacrifice can be either heroic or destructive, depending on your perspective.

There is also - lest this sounds like a solemn procession - a chase across the surface of an alien planet straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark; video-game-ready action sequences; a cutting jibe about the hair of Enterprise's captain, James T. Kirk (Chris Pine); and his suggested dalliance with a pair of frisky alien girls who literally make for a temporarily blue movie due to their other-worldly skin pigment.

Abrams and his writers confidently interweave emotionally resonant themes - friendship, hubris, the desire for revenge - through scenes that are both expansive and intimate. It's a pleasure to experience a blockbuster so attuned to the dramatic building blocks, especially in a series that sometimes veered towards the pompous. The movie is diagrammed out - a little too neatly - but it's hard to deny its effectiveness when the connections are made so solidly.

The detonator is Benedict Cumberbatch's John Harrison - Kirk and Spock's fellow Starfleet officer - whose terrorist attacks in London and San Francisco set the story in motion. The Sherlock star goes through each scene with precise movements and holds his head very still, making his baritone voice all the more menacing when he speaks. Cumberbatch's diction deserves its own spinoff.

In 2009's Star Trek, Eric Bana's villain Nero howled with a madman's obsessiveness, but Harrison's icy disdain is far more effective, because his relationship with Kirk has a tangible dynamic.

Kirk's boyish cockiness is the character's trademark, but he falters before the daunting Harrison, whose skills include killing a great many armed opponents and letting his fringe fall dramatically across one eye.

When Harrison flees Earth, it is to the Klingon world of Kronos, where Starfleet and the interplanetary federation cannot reach him. But Starfleet's Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller) has a familiar-sounding solution: surreptitiously get as close to the border as you can, and then fire torpedoes from outer space in a galactic version of a drone strike.

How to deal with Harrison is another cause for division between best friends but complete opposites Kirk (all heart) and Spock (all head). Pine and Quinto capture their bond with a genuine mix of exasperation and tenderness. The pair and Harrison form the picture's dramatic triangle but with Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Spock's exasperated partner and the ship's communications officer, there's the outline of a droll romantic-comedy triangle.

The humour is brisk, especially from Karl Urban as the deceptively dry Dr McCoy (back, along with every other ensemble crew member). But it doesn't undercut the movie's contemporary allusions, which include militarising to keep the peace, ignoring the rule of law in a war on terror and the privatisation of warfare. "Are you private security or Starfleet?" the Enterprise's chief engineer, Scotty (Simon Pegg), pointedly asks an interloper.

Scotty has a tiny alien sidekick, and it's clear Abrams has put some of the movie's considerable budget into diversifying the planetary mix and orthodox world-building (there are hovercars and shiny clothes in the 23rd century).

But his leading success is adding a physicality, whether real or illusory, to the computer-generated imagery. Abrams, like his mentor on Super 8, Steven Spielberg, uses special effects liberally but is never a prisoner to them. Objects intersect with a juddering force, whether it's a starship and a planet, or Uhura and a Klingon warrior.

This all bodes well for the Star Wars sequel Abrams will direct next, especially as Star Trek, and particularly Star Trek into Darkness, reflect an ability to amplify familiar elements and draw more deeply from their wealth of detail. Revered characters, especially in a film concerned with accepting your mortality, rarely get such juicily enjoyable second lives.